Workhouse Arts Center

An Innovative Collaboration of the Arts in a Unique, Historical Setting

The Workhouse Arts Center, a project of the Workhouse Arts Foundation, helps to grow and support a vibrant arts center that offers engaging opportunities and inspiring experiences for all in visual and performing arts, education classes, historical perspective, community engagement and personal enrichment. The Workhouse is housed at a unique historical property—a 55-acre portion of the DC Correctional Complex’s former campus in Lorton, VA that dates back to 1910. After the complex’s closure in 2001, Fairfax County leadership and an adaptive reuse task force transformed the site into a community arts center where people could learn about, participate in, and be inspired by the region’s and nation’s best visual and performing arts talent, and come together for festivals and community building. Opened in 2008, the Workhouse Arts Center now curates and presents a dozen art exhibitions from local, regional and national artists. It houses nearly 65 resident and associate artists who produce 70-plus annual shows, presents 300 performing arts events and offers over 300 education classes, engaging nearly 100,000 people annually.